Tom Kim (-13) remains the leader of the Travelers Championship, the last of the eight designated tournaments of the year on the PGA Tour, after the second round. The Korean, after signing a 62 on Thursday, still went to the practice street to make sure everything was still in place and sharp, as he has confessed. These Koreans are crazy. So today, on his 22nd birthday, he has even raised the level of efficiency in the tee to green game at the TPC River Highlands and in this second round he has only missed one street and one green in regulation. For now, no one coughs close to him, it’s almost impossible, so he maintains a two-stroke lead over his immediate pursuers, who are Collin Morikawa (-11), Akshay Bhatia (-11)… And Scottie Scheffler (-11).
Bhatia doesn’t need so much precision from tee to green. He manages to make many more birdies than bogeys and there’s nothing more to say. Morikawa, for his part, has marched today more in tune with the Korean: he has not missed a single street and has hunted 16 greens in regulation. As for Scheffler, faithful to his appointment in the last matches of the weekend, whatever the tournament, he has also nailed it from tee to green, repeating Kim’s numbers, a single missed street and 17 greens in regulation hunted.
The difference is that Scheffler was caught in the field by the storm and had to swallow the long suspension of more than three hours before going out to finish his round. He had two holes left and, once the game was resumed, he wasted a good birdie opportunity on the 17th and finished with a birdie on the 18th to get into the penultimate match on Saturday.
In reality, to be more precise, the sequence was as follows: he had made three consecutive birdies on holes 13, 14 and 15 and just before the suspension he wasted another good option on the 16th, par 3. Then, with the game stopped and the water falling heavily on Cromwell, he waited patiently and in the company of his family, to see if the game was resumed. More specifically, with his wife and son. There he was, as he has told, changing diapers (it’s literal) and trying to soothe the poor creature, who wouldn’t stop crying. Then, as has been said, he still went out to play and picked up the thread where he had left it, playing almost perfect golf and finishing the round with a birdie on the 18th. Pure Number One routine that is still experiencing fatherhood. For now, the emotional wear and tear he had accumulated does not show and the shadow of this competitive beast is again long…
The TPC River Highlands course is getting hit from all sides. These players can’t be stopped. Today, Lowry (-9) and MacIntyre (-8) have mimicked Kim’s 62 on Thursday. Nothing to do with the scenarios of the previous two weeks, Muirfield Village and Pinehurst, where pars were magnificent and a good bogey could even be celebrated. At the Travelers, this week, pars can be very bad and bogeys real tragedies… Given the choice, no doubt, we prefer the most demanding tests, since we are talking about designated events, but anyway, nothing and no one obliges it to be so and it is not a matter of frowning. Long live the birdies.
Another thing is the cut. We should already assume that top-level golf is heading down that path, the one of the four rounds without a cut, but there’s no way. Where there’s a good cut, let these wide-sleeved Fridays be removed.
